Now with Armored Core VI finally out and people have finished the game, it’s time to talk about its true ending and how that ties into the series as a whole.
I’ve already talked about the very specific mecha anime influences on Armored Core VI, but there’s a bit more here to talk about. Most notably about how these games end their respective stories and where that narrative setup comes from.
Firstly though, this whole post is one massive spoiler, not only for Armored Core VI but also Armored Trooper VOTOMS. If you haven’t finished either of those, correct that oversight and then come back.
SPOILER ALERT
There are three endings for Armored Core VI. The first two have you either destroy the Coral or save it and are the “bad” and “good” endings respectively. However, there is a third ending that can only be initially accessed on your third playthrough. This is the “true” ending and it deals with the real antagonist of the game.
This is where I have to back up and talk about the older Armored Core games. In many of those games, it’s revealed that the organization that takes care of Armored Core pilots is actually a malignant artificial intelligence.
In the first Armored Core, the final mission has you destroy the headquarters of the Raven’s Nest and the AI that controls it. This happens again in Armored Core Master of Arena and then again in Armored Core 3. Not to mention multiple other times after that in various other games in the series. In short, it’s a common narrative theme in Armored Core.
So when Allmind started giving me missions on my third playthrough of Armored Core VI, I knew where things would end up in a story sense.
Specifically, that Allmind was in fact an AI bent on controlling humanity and Coral. Like in the previous games, you end up defeating Allmind in the third and “true” ending of the game. Freeing the Coral and, in theory, unleashing the potential of humanity and Coral together.
The fun and interesting part in all of this is how it all ties into the end of Armored Trooper VOTOMS. In that anime series, the protagonist and mecha pilot extraordinaire Chirico Cuvie is picked as an Overman to rule humanity by an entity only known as Wiseman.
It turns out this is actually an AI (of sorts) that has engineered a massive galactic war and pulled at the strings of civilization for millennia. Naturally, Chirico destroys Wiseman in order to free humanity and it’s this narrative setup that the Armored Core games have leveraged since 1997.
Like the “irregular” Raven that triumphs against all odds to down the AI and free humanity and Coral, you take on the same role as Chirico in Armored Trooper VOTOMS at the end of Armored Core VI.
We also know that this is something the team at FromSoftware have referenced when it comes to the mecha anime of Ryosuke Takahashi, but I just think it’s great that the story in Armored Core VI is thematically still consistent both with the older games and the mecha anime that helped in part to inspire it.
Armored Core VI is now available on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC. Feel free to also check out my review.
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